Prior Art FIG. 1 illustrates a general prior art system that implements a pipelined graphics processing system. In this system, data source 10 generates a stream of expanded vertices defining primitives. These vertices are passed, one at a time, through pipelined graphic system 12 via vertex memory 13 for storage purposes. Once the expanded vertices are received from the vertex memory 13 into the pipelined graphic system 12, the vertices are transformed and lit by a transformation module 14 and a lighting module 16, respectively, and further clipped and set-up for being rendered by a rasterizer 18, thus generating rendered primitives that are then displayed on display device 20.
During operation, the transform module 14 may be used for receiving vertices in model coordinates and transforming the three dimensional vertices from their model coordinates to the two dimensional window where they will ultimately be displayed. In order to achieve the transformation, standard transform parameters may be employed such as a view port, a viewing matrix, a world matrix, a projection matrix and so forth.
Together, the foregoing parameters allow geometric transformations to express the location of an object relative to another object, rotate, clip and size various objects, as well as change viewing positions, directions, and perspectives in the three dimensional scene. Coordinate transformations that transform the three dimensional vertices from their model coordinates to the two dimensional window where they will be displayed typically involve one or more of translation, rotation and scaling.
Prior art transform systems typically handle scalar and vector values that are generated during the transform process separately. For example, a position attribute, i.e. (X, Y, Z, W), may be processed via a vector operator such as multiplier and/or an adder, thus rendering a scalar value. While a scalar operator may process such scalar value, it is typically not processed again by the vector operator. Until now there have been no attempts to integrate the processing of scalar and vector forms of processed vertex data during graphics pipeline processing.
Yet another process handled by the transform module 14 is blending, or “skinning.” Skinning refers to the process of adding realism to segmented polygonal objects by blending a joint between the objects. Prior Art FIG. 1A illustrates a pair of objects 22 before and after skinning is performed.
Conventionally, the skinning process is carried out using a computer program and a general-purpose processor. As such, there have been no attempts to implement skinning on hardware for the purpose of incurring the benefits, i.e. speed, efficiency, etc., associated with dedicated circuitry.